


oh, how broken they are

by fandom_and_stuffs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 10, Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:18:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2616497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_and_stuffs/pseuds/fandom_and_stuffs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is screaming.<br/>Sam was in a state of suspended grief.<br/>Castiel was dead. </p>
<p>Oh, how broken they were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, how broken they are

Dean was screaming. Again.   
Sam knew that there was nothing to be done about it. His brother had been having horrible nightmares for years – he kept quiet enough about them during the day, but Sam knew that Dean knew what he heard at night. Sometimes they were bad, really bad. So bad that Sam couldn’t even wake Dean up and he had to lie there, unable to fall asleep because of the screams. They had been particularly violent after Dean had come back from Hell; but Sam understood those. Being in the cage with Lucifer and Michael had left him no stranger to night time terrors of the Pit. This, though. The younger man just couldn’t emphasize. Being a demon… it had taken its toll. And that’s without reliving everything he did as a demon. Trying to kill Sam was one thing, but what had happened to Cas because of Dean – no, not because of Dean. It wasn’t a side effect. It was what Dean had done that had happened to Cas. It was the direct affect, it was the result. And now Dean was utterly, completely broken by what he had done and what he had caused and what he had pushed into effect.   
Castiel was dead because of what Dean Winchester had done. Castiel’s death was what Dean Winchester had done. He may not have been totally himself at the time but he had still done it.   
He had killed Cas.   
His best friend.   
One of the few people whom he gave him love and his trust to.   
He did not love and trust all too easily, not after everything that he had been through, but when he did he did it completely.   
And now he was reliving those moments, those terrible moments, when he had taken the First Blade and he had spoken to Cas with cruel words and a harsh, evil look in that old abandoned warehouse where he had once died. When he had spoken to him and he had beat him down, until he was on the ground, whispering those fateful words that Dean had somehow both wanted and dreaded hearing:   
“Dean… I love you.”   
The broken shell of a man that remained of Dean Winchester now was reliving the moment when he, or rather, the demon him, sighed and replied the words he both wanted to say, and dreaded saying:   
“Love you too, angel.”   
Unfortunately he found himself speaking further words after this, words he never envisioned saying:   
“Not that it changes anything.”   
After that, was the part he was most dreading dreaming of.   
Holding Cas down.   
Taking the blade. That damned blade: it had caused far too much destruction for one jagged piece of bone. Slowly pushing it into Cas’ chest as he pulled him in to kiss him on the lips. Seeing the blood start to dribble down his shirt disgustingly, the same blood that was clotted on and coating his blade.  
Seeing the look of utter betrayal, unbelief and worst of all, a resigned sort of sadness in Cas’ eyes.   
And then watching the life fade from them.   
So now, after the last wisps of grace had burned from the angel and cured Dean, because Castiel always gives – gave everything for Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man whom he had saved from Hell and saved from one hell of a lot more things too. Now was when Dean was torturing himself over it, pulling himself apart from the inside. Sam himself could barely grieve for Cas himself (the one thing that people always seem to forget is that Cas was Sam’s best friend too, that they cared for each other as well) because he had to make sure that his brother was keeping himself alive, that he got out of bed each day, that he ate food and drank water, that he didn’t drown himself on booze and women to make him forget even though this was obviously the one thing that he would never ever be able to forget as long as he lived and afterwards as well, wherever he ended up. Dean had always looked after Sam, his ‘pain in the ass little brother’ Sammy, and now it was his turn to return the favour until Dean could pull himself together enough to be a fully functioning human being.   
Truth was, Dean just wanted to die. Either that or he wanted to be with Cas again, so he could tell him how sorry he was. So he could tell him he really did love him really and truly; no jokes or jibes or taunts. There was no way he could possibly leave it like that. He just wanted to thank Cas for everything. But now he was trapped – both inside the bunker by Sam who insisted that he wasn’t well – Dean knew it was just an excuse for making sure he didn’t do anything stupid - and inside his own head when he slept. Stuck reliving those awful moments, but as minutes and hours instead. Not to forget that, just when he thought it could not possibly get any worse, his brain decided to plague him nightly with the million other ways that he could have killed the angel that he loved but didn’t, each one easily a million times worse than the last.   
He thought that was really it then, but he started having good dreams. Dreams about the times he shared with his angel and the times that he could have, which was the true torture. Why, do you ask? It was because he couldn’t scream. What use would it be, shouting his throat raw because of happiness? But if he didn’t scream he was even more trapped than he was in a nightmare.   
Sam was in a state of suspended grief.   
He could not grieve for his lost friend, for he had to look after his brother. After everything he had done for him, it was the least that he could do. Nightmares visited him, too; less terrible than Dean’s but horrid nightmares all the same. They still made him scream.   
And on the nights when Dean escaped sleep, listening to his brother was torture. Because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Sam; but there was nothing that he could do for Sam, no more than Sam could do anything for him. Whatever Dean managed to do he knew Sam was grateful for. Even the littlest things that Sam may have motivated himself to do, like eating three times a day and jogging – just for the normalcy. Dean still greatly distrusted jogging. But looking after Sammy was his job. It had always been and maybe it hadn’t been the best or even a good thing at all, but it. Was. What. He. Did. End of conversation. Although now it was different than it had been: Sam got Dean out of bed and made sure he ate, Dean got Sam out of the bunker for a few hours, Sam stopped Dean from doing stupid things like getting drunk off his head or stoned, and so on. The cycle continued.   
Even so, it was months before they got out on a hunt again. Together, in the Impala just like old times. Almost.   
Because still - no matter how many vampires they ganked or demons they exorcised (while Sam had completed the trials to close the gated of Hell with suspiciously no ill effects as of yet, it just stopped demons from returning to earth and the ones left there were very much active and angry) it would never be ‘just like old times’ ever, ever again. How could they just forget Cas, and the apocalypse and the angels falling or any of it? But Cas especially. Because after everything he had done for the Winchesters Castiel was very much dead and he was not coming back. Not… not this time. This time seemed to be one too many for the angel. Ironic that the one time his friends needed him the most, he wasn’t coming back.   
Sam didn’t want to die. He was completely – almost completely happy with his life right now. He had his brother, a home, sort of, and he was hunting every now and again. If only, if only Cas was here; Dean could get out of bed without prompting; if only things were just that little bit more right Sam maybe could relax and life his life properly.   
Obviously, nothing could ever be right enough for the Winchesters. They were always cursed; right back as far as he knew. That only really extended to Henry but all the same; he had been of little better luck than them. John was - he wasn’t the greatest dad, Sam thought to himself more than a few times throughout the years, but he did his best and that’s all that he could have possibly done for the two boys. Given the circumstances. Maybe if things were different (but Sam mostly tried to avoid wondering what his life would have been like if ‘things were different’: if Mary hadn’t died, if they hadn’t been hunters, if he hadn’t died, if if if if)…   
None of that mattered now. All there was for Sam to do was to wait for something to happen, to look after Dean and himself, to grieve. Even though he couldn’t.   
Castiel was dead.   
He had hoped, when he was alive; that is, when he was dying, that he would get his own human heaven. Maybe Sam and Dean would have been there, and then the real Sam and Dean once they died. He would have liked that. Would have liked spending eternity with his two best friends. But he died… too soon? Too much of an angel? Too… too something or maybe not enough of something else was what stopped him reaching anything but the oblivion angels reached. Cas – well Cas was dead. The angel that had been Castiel was in the stars now, never mind how overly romanticized and clichéd that was. He felt nothing, saw nothing, no music fell upon his ears – but no screams either – and he just wasn’t.   
Forget his friends in mourning and forget everything he had done because he’s no better off for it now. Cas, the one who was the friend of the Winchesters and had too much heart was gone now. And all that remained of the angel he had once been, and was happy with being may have died long ago in spirit but really he was still there, even as a star. Castiel had died an angel’s death. Cas had died a human’s.   
Castiel was dead.   
Sam was in a state of suspended grief.   
And Dean was screaming. Again.   
Oh, how broken they were.


End file.
